


hiding from the world, i'm safe in your arms

by SuperStitious18



Series: Darhkatom One-Shots [3]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Happy Ending, Minor Violence, Romantic Fluff, Soft Ray Palmer, Suggestive Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 14:50:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17810021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuperStitious18/pseuds/SuperStitious18
Summary: A series of moments where Ray contemplates his feelings for Nora.





	hiding from the world, i'm safe in your arms

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MrsNoraPalmer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrsNoraPalmer/gifts).



> A surprise for my friend, I hope you like it Ris!  
> Thank you to @WardenRoot for betaing this and helping me get it solid!  
> Enjoy!

Ray first noticed the thing Nora did one night when he was working on his ATOM suit in the lab, attempting to tune up the blaster. It wasn’t a big thing at first, just her sitting there, drawing and occasionally looking up at him and biting her lip as she studied him. He was content to have her nearby and she didn’t look troubled about anything, so he just basked in the comfortable silence that had built up between them.

However, the next time he glanced over at her, she was watching him with her chin propped up in her hand, gazing intently at his face. Nora blinked in surprise when he noticed her attention, giving him a soft smile in return to his curious look. He enjoyed her watching him and she was too adorable to avoid forever, so he traipsed over and greeted her with a soft kiss. 

“Hello to you too, Mr. Palmer,” Nora murmured as Ray maneuvered himself so he was settled between her thighs. That move pleased her, allowing her to wrap her arms around his waist and settle her head on his chest so she could listen to his heart beating.

Ray wrapped his arms around her shoulders, resting his chin on top of her head, pleased to have her even closer than before. This was a much better way to relax than welding and fixing circuitry, even though that was a thing he needed to do, particularly before the next fight the Legends got into. He just couldn’t bring himself to pull away from Nora as he was enjoying this.

He loved moments like this. Calm. Quiet. Just them, acting as each other’s anchor in the chaos that was the life of a superhero. Rare moments where they could just coexist without the pressures of filling the silence, without worrying about the next threat that inevitably lurked around every corner of their lives. These moments revitalized him, giving him strength and energy to continue living, to continue fighting everything the multiverse threw at him. He would honestly do anything he had to if it would allow him to come home to her every time.

“And hello to you, Ms. Darhk.” Ray sighed, kissing the top of her head, feeling her nuzzle further into his shirt and tighten her grip at the rumble of his voice. 

Yeah, this was his favorite place to be.

\-------------------------------------------------------------

Suffice to say, Ray started noticing a pattern. As much as he loved and treasured Nora, she was about as stealthy as Nate was when he was high on drugs. She may have thought she was being sneaky, but he never failed to take notice of when she wanted his attention. She would do  _ the thing _ where she would be watching him, quiet and observant at first until she had had enough of assessing him. Nora would do it every time, place her hand under her chin and gaze intently at him like she was waiting for him to pick up what she wanted.

He would always, without fail, go over and hold her like he did that day in the lab. She’d greet him just as she did then, and he would parrot back his own hello before they just basked in each other’s comforting presence. 

This time was because he had gotten hurt on their latest mission, chasing a chimera through New York during the height of the Harlem Renaissance. That had been a long and extremely tricky mission to handle. First of all, the problem had been controlling the general panic rippling through everyone. Second, it had been trying to prevent the general public from injuring or killing the creature when they started fighting  _ back.  _ That meant that he, John, Zari, and Nora had been running around, rushing people away from the fight, the magicians of the group erecting barriers as needed, and Zari deflecting sudden fire attacks aimed at unaware citizens. 

That left Nate, Charlie, Ava, and Sara to evacuate people from the area of the fight, defending them from debris and stray magic going everywhere. Mick had stayed on the Waverider as his specialty being fire would only fuel the creature and he wasn’t interested in yelling at people to stop being idiots. He stayed behind to keep the medbay prepped and have a containment unit for the chimera on standby if they made it back with the creature alive.

Ray had a malfunction in his suit again nearing the end of the fight when John and Nora had dwindled the creatures powers down to almost nothing. Unfortunately, he had taken a hit from the chimera’s fire breath as it gave a last push to avoid being captured, causing his suit to malfunction and stop fully shielding him from harm. Nevertheless, he still threw himself in front of Charlie, who was holding a small girl in an effort to protect them both from getting hurt, despite the fact that he would  _ definitely _ be rushed to the medbay for third degree burns.

He had to be portalled straight into the medbay as the fire was hot enough to melt part of his suit and burn the exposed part of his neck. It was touch and go for a little bit, his vitals crashing once as the adrenaline wore off, pain and shock setting in to get him to start screaming. Ray had just vaguely been aware of Nora’s own shrieks of terror and Sara’s yelling as she dragged his girlfriend away from where Nate was carefully taking off his suit to help Gideon heal him faster. The pain of having his helmet removed had overwhelmed him and he had blacked out.

Now, he was sitting up on the edge of the medbed that he had been parked in since the end of the battle. Nate had just finished shaving his head as Ray had lost quite a bit of hair due to the fire attack and burning metal of the suit. “Looks good man,” Nate appraised it, giving him a nod and a thumbs up after the once over. “I’ll go find Nora, Gideon’s been keeping her from coming in while you healed.”

Ray winced at that, the memory of her screams extremely fresh in his mind. Nate gave him one last sympathetic look and left him with a good luck, giving him a few moments to himself and to think about how he was going to handle Nora’s grief. Hell, he was unsure how he was handling it as he had come extremely close to death again because of the shock his body went into. If it weren’t for Gideon’s quick and skilled work, he might not have survived and they would be planning his funeral instead of him sitting in bed with no hair and a small web of scars on his neck and shoulders.

Nora came in quicker than he thought she would, standing in the threshold. She looked even smaller than normal, having donned one of his shirts and hunched over, looking like she was about to have a heart attack at the thought of him not being up like Nate had said. He wanted to go over and hold her like he always did but he had been told to stay seated until Gideon released him. Ray had been lucky to get a haircut as soon as he did, Gideon had been determined that he was at 100% capacity before being allowed to so much as sit up. Nate did some pretty smooth talking, getting her to relent on the restriction.

So, he waited. Instead, the two of them watched each other and made sure with their own eyes that their partner was okay. Ray held his breath when Nora slowly started making her way toward him, inching closer and closer as if she was afraid that he would suddenly disappear if she moved too quickly.

And then she was in his arms, clutching onto him tightly, her breathing getting more ragged the longer they stayed wrapped up in each other. 

Ray moved his hands to her waist, suddenly picking her up and putting her on the bed so he could hold her to him. He was briefly thankful that someone had the thought to make sure he was at least wearing pants, but that was quickly pushed from his mind as Nora started sobbing into his bare chest. His heart ached for her, understanding that she had lost so much in her lifetime, and she almost lost him today because he had gone off to be a hero and keep people safe. 

That’s what she loved so much about him though. She had told him that no matter how she felt about what he did, she understood that this was a vital part of who he was. Ray knew that his ability to care and protect was going to be the death of him one day, that and his endless love for the woman still sobbing into his chest. 

He changed course, and started rubbing her shaking back, hoping to either soothe her or to encourage her to get all of her emotions out. There was nothing he wanted more than to take away all her hurt and just get rid of it, make it disappear from this plane of existence. But he couldn’t, all he could do was be here, be her rock while she cried, and hope that all would be better when she was done.

A little while passed by, and he thoughtlessly started to hum a tune he heard listening to the radio one time while doing dishes. It had been a love song, the singer declaring everything they would be for their lover, crooning their wishes for their future together, and listing how far their love would go. He asked Gideon to find it for him and add it to his lab playlist, wanting to learn it so he could maybe awkwardly sing it to Nora. Ray just hoped that it wouldn’t end badly like he feared, but he would remain positive as she loved him, and loved it when he would ramble to her as she enjoyed the sound of his voice. Now was a good a time as any to try it out. He continued with his soft humming, introducing the actual tune to the situation. 

The gentle vibrations rumbling through his chest helped abate her tears, slowly easing her from a mess of terror and pain to a being of contentment. The spot where her head had been resting on his chest was wet with tears, as were her cheeks, but neither of them could bring themselves to care as her eyes started to slip shut. He wouldn’t blame her, he knew she was emotionally drained as well as physically from using such a large amount of her energy reserves for the fight. It wouldn’t be a problem though, he would just carry her to their room as he had a small nap earlier which, yeah, was him being unconscious, but it was still more rest than she had since before the chimera.

Once he was sure she was fully asleep, he gently shifted their position, picking her up to carry her away so they could sleep next to each other in the comfort of their room. Ray’s heart swelled in size as she clutched tighter, muttering something about love and passing right back out in his arms. Oh yeah, he was definitely in love with this woman, and didn’t care who knew just how soft he was for Nora Darhk. 

All of it was worth it for her.

\--------------------------------------------------------------

Ray was just happily moving objects around in the Waverider’s storage room, organizing the mess that had accrued over the last several years of travel and had been neglected. He was on a rampage so to speak, seeking out clutter and filth on the ship he shared with several other people, and getting them all to participate in cleaning their spaces. Charlie and Mick he bribed with their favorite dinners and beers, that were from somewhere other than Gideon’s fabricator. (Of course, he promised Mick more ink ribbons for his typewriter and gave Charlie advice on how to finally ask Zari out, but those were his secrets with them.) 

Sara had been easy to convince. He had barely brought up the idea and Ava had jumped on it, doing all the hard work for him by asking Sara with her puppy eyes that were reserved solely for her. She caved within five seconds, agreeing with his idea on decluttering the ship, and followed Ava to the Captain’s quarters. Ray chose to believe they were going to immediately get started on cleaning, and definitely not anything else that he didn’t want to think about his friends doing.

Zari and Nate were also easy to convince. Nate didn’t live there anymore, having his own place in D.C, but he was around enough that they always forgot that little detail. Zari was swayed by the idea of a tour of donut places in L.A circa 2017, one that Nate had actually offered to take her on, as well as offering his help if she needed it when cleaning. 

Personally, Ray was ecstatic that Zari had a close friend in Nate, giant puppy that he was, and a nerd about anything that his friends loved. They made a great team, bonding over the movie  _ Groundhog Day  _ in particular. Though Nate had a tiny penchant for going on history rants and accidentally giving Zari ideas on how to either fix it, or the idea to sic pterodactyls on Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers of the United States. He still didn’t believe them when they said it was just an idea and “definitely something we did  _ not _ do”. Sara and Ava had even less faith in them than he did but there weren’t any sudden anachronisms they needed to fix, so he left it as is.

John was… being John. As odd as it was, he kept meticulous track about his possessions, not wanting to lose them or have them thrown away again. He was still bitter about Ava tossing the foot, to which Ray had mentioned she was just making sure nothing was  _ afoot _ and he was really  _ toeing _ the line on what was acceptable to keep. Those puns had gotten several things thrown at him, earning him a bruise on his arm from where Zari had punched him, but he had been oh so proud of them. He had gotten the point though, encouraging John to keep everything locked away and put up out of reach of meticulous Time Directors.

The last person he had had to convince was Nora. She agreed as soon as he said it was something he wanted to do, but he suspected she just wanted to sit and watch him lift heavy objects. He wasn’t entirely sure of her true motives.

Now, he just finished moving a box that contained old spare parts that he and Zari kept around just in case they would come in handy in the upkeep of all the machinery that made up the Waverider, plus suits, weapons, and all that jazz.

He had been sweating quite a lot, and decided he could do with taking off his shirt since he was the only one in this area of the ship. Or so he thought. Ray had just wiped off sweat from his face when he felt a pair of eyes watching him. He had a hunch before he even turned around, but he did and his gut feeling was confirmed when he saw Nora watching him, perched atop a crate, her chin cradled in her hand, looking extremely interested in what he was doing. 

She wouldn’t mind that he was currently dripping with sweat, so he ambled over and settled in between her thighs, curling around her, happy to be in her arms again. He felt and heard her sigh as she wrapped her arms around his waist and settling in to listen to his elevated heart rate. Ray knew she might have wanted something more, but he really just wanted to hold his best girl in his arms and maybe kiss her a few times before he got back to working on organizing.

Ray rubbed his cheek against the top of her head affectionately for a moment before he pulled back, allowing his hands to drop to her waist while he just took in her soft features and enjoyed the lazy smile that had settled onto her face. Her expression changed, her nose scrunching up, and Nora puckered her lips slightly. She looked so ridiculously adorable that he couldn’t help himself and gave into kissing her, an action she encouraged by threading her fingers in his still short hair and pressing closer.

He didn’t get any more work done in the storage bay, instead choosing to laze around with the love of his life, and get sweet kisses in exchange for letting her stay cuddled up to his front. Ray doesn’t think he’ll ever get tired of spending time with her and he never, ever wants to stop laughing and making new memories with her.

\----------------------------------------------------

Everything has to come full circle sooner or later. He knew that. He’d known that for a long time, that everything has to come to light eventually. Nora would no doubt get curious about his favorite thing to do when it was just them, when it was calm, quiet, and there was a free moment from the chaos that is the Legends.

He also should have known it would happen in the lab with him working on the ATOM suit again and Nora scratching away in her sketchbook, eyes flickering between the paper in her lap and watching him move about. Once again, he enjoyed the soft attention she gave him, despite being focused on her own project. He did the same thing, watching her when he hit a natural break in his work, loving the soft smile that seemed like it was a permanent fixture on her lips.

She was just always amazing to watch, to exist with, and he was  _ so honored _ to call himself her boyfriend. Ray would tear the multiverse apart with his bare hands if that’s what it took to make her happy, he knew that wasn’t what she wanted but he didn’t mind. He’d prove his love over and over again until she knew in every fiber of her being that he was wholly and truly hers.

For now, he watched as she put her sketchbook to the side, propping her head in her hand again and scrutinizing him. Ray waited, letting her search him for whatever she was seeking this time. Secretly he hoped that it wouldn’t take long, he’d been welding and tinkering for two hours and there was nothing more that he would love than to snuggle with her.

Her smile changed into a frown, her thoughts going to a place that he was sure he didn’t like them going to. So he abandoned his project a little earlier than normal and went to settle into his usual spot in her arms, when she stopped him with a hand held out in front of her body. Ray stopped, his worry growing exponentially.    


“Nora?” he questioned, his voice sounding unsure.

“Why do you always do that?” she asked. “You’ll let me look at you for however long I want and you always seem to know when I want to be held.”

Oh, that. That was easy to explain, at least in his opinion. She was easy to figure out if you listened and truly paid attention to her wants and needs, he had thought he had conveyed that he would always listen clearly enough to her. Apparently he didn’t, but he didn’t mind verbally explaining it to her if that’s what she wanted him to do.

“Oh, I uh, I like to check on you to make sure you’re okay whenever you’re near me. Usually, you’ll stop whatever you’re doing and watch me, like you’re studying me. I don’t mind because if I did, I’d kind of be a hypocrite you know? Your face changes when you’re done, just a little bit, but I notice?” He winced, his explanation sounded clunky and odd to his ears but he craved for her to know, for her to know that he cared. He loved her more than anything else in his life. “Like, uh, when I got hurt and I put you on the bed? I figured, hey, we always do that so I figured it’d help you process your emotions and like, I like to hold you and be held in return.”

That had been the worst way he could even begin to explain the depth of his feelings, but the message seemed to get across to Nora nonetheless. Tears sprang up to her eyes, making the green stand out exceptionally well from his perspective. “I had no idea that was our thing apparently,” her voice was thick, hopefully it was a happy cry she was about to indulge in and not…

Well. He’d rather not think he’d freaked her out and she was crying tears of sadness.

Ray scuffed the durasteel floor with his shoe, suddenly feeling unsure of himself. What if she didn’t like his need to hold her and just exist with her? What if she liked the more intimate parts of their relationship but not the softer parts of him? He had been sure that she enjoyed every bit of him but his brain wouldn’t stop now, nagging on every insecurity that he thought he had long buried. It was an unpleasant thing to be faced with, but he’s had entirely too much experience with negative issues appearing later in his relationships than he would like to have.

Nora interrupted his spiral by opening her arms, eyes still shimmering with tears, but she looked oh so happy if the goofy smile on her face was any indication. He wasted no time, snuggling into her and sighing happily, ignoring the tears of joy now sliding down his cheeks and finding their final resting spot in her hair. Ray felt her settle, tightening her grip on him and her head slotting home on his chest right above where his heart was beating the strongest. 

If you asked him, it was beating just for her.

“I love you, Ray Palmer, and you are the softest teddy bear of a man that I have ever met.”

“I love you too, Nora Darhk.” He wasn’t offended. After all, there were worse things to be called when he was hiding from the world, safe in the arms of the love of his life. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading, please let me know what you thought or come yell at me on tumblr @ superstititous19 !


End file.
